


Rovers

by nonhic



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Conspiracy, Gen, Mytharc, Post-Colonization (X-Files)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:42:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3221060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonhic/pseuds/nonhic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-colonization, character death. Spoilers for Never Again. Canon divergence after Season 6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rovers

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Outpost](https://archiveofourown.org/works/493971) by [bardsmaid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bardsmaid/pseuds/bardsmaid). 



The air is heavy and wet. Scully follows behind him with her short steps, wiping her lip every now and then.

“When should we stop?” he asks. He isn’t even looking at her.

“I don’t know.”

Krycek doesn’t reply. They walk a few more hours in silence until the afternoon passes into the early evening.

“Here,” he says, stopping abruptly. She notices that the spot is no different from any other that they’ve come across in the last few miles. No point in dwelling on it. She has no interest in picking apart his peculiarities and preferences.

With a shrug, his bag rolls off his shoulder and onto the dead grass. He turns to face her when she doesn’t do the same.

She sighs. Her bag drops with a thud.

  
Together they set up the small tent before building the fire.

Dinner is meager and efficient. At night she sleeps in the tent. Somehow he dozes outside with all those bugs in the open darkness.

Before she falls asleep, she thinks of Mulder. She does it to remind herself of the life she used to have, when the world wasn’t falling apart, when he was still there to lay down beside her. Things aren’t like that now. He isn’t here anymore.

********

She was scared of him at first. She kept a knife on herself, hidden from him. He made no effort to conceal his own weapon; he’d take his knife out regularly to shave or sharpen the blade. It stayed tucked in his waistband on his right side, where his good arm could easily reach.

Admittedly, he stayed away from her. It was careful and deliberate maneuvering on his part, and she didn’t know what to think. It only frightened her more.

In April, they were ambushed. Three desperate young men hell bent on stealing anything. They attacked Krycek first before chasing her down. In that struggle, she’d lost her knife. Buried in the leaves, flung somewhere at the base of a tree. It didn’t matter; she was too busy trying to keep one of them from undoing her jeans. She had managed to give her assailant a bloody nose, but it only made him wilder. Before anything happened, Krycek pulled him off.

All three of them were dead before he dragged her away.

‘There could be more,’ he had said.

They didn’t make a fire that night; it would attract too much attention. She sat by herself in the darkness, wiping away her tears.

‘Scully,’ she remembered him saying. Although he was sitting close by, his voice sounded far away. Somehow he knew she was crying. She thought she had been quiet, but he could tell anyway.

  
‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. Even then, he didn’t try to touch her.

********

He is eyeing a house.

“Want to go in?”

The wind blows, whipping her hair. If they could go inside for only a moment, she’d certainly feel less miserable. “Better now than at night,” she says.

With his knife in hand, he leads the way through the open door. They sweep each room but turn up nothing. It must have been picked through by the previous people passing by.

He kicks at a chair in his way. “Let’s go.”

Disappointed, she follows him out. It would be too dangerous to stay here. Any type of shelter was an obvious refuge, and bad people frequently took advantage of it. Sometimes they’d find the bodies of innocent people slain and scattered in houses and buildings, their belongings and clothing stolen.

The wind doesn't let up by the time night falls.

She crawls into her tent, still cold. They can’t build a fire tonight without setting the field ablaze.

Through a crack in the opening, she can see him sitting upright on the ground like a statue. He isn’t even shivering.

“You’re not going to sleep?” she calls out quietly. In the back of her mind, she wishes that she still had her knife.

“Later,” he says after a pause.

Well, now she can’t bring herself to sleep. It makes her feel uneasy, having him so close by and awake like that. She isn’t sure what he might be planning to do.

“It’s okay,” he says suddenly, as if to calm her. “I’ll keep watch tonight.”

“For what?”

He doesn’t answer.

She fights to stay awake, but it doesn’t work for long. She dreams of Mulder before the nightmares start. Dead bodies of ordinary people like herself, stripped and bloody, in the houses they’d come across. She dreams that someone is chasing her, and when they catch her by the ankle, the knife she thought she always carried is gone.

She wakes up, murmuring something. It’s morning, and still dark. Still cold.

Outside, Krycek is gathering his belongings.

“Awake so early?” he asks when she emerges from the tent.

“Yeah.”

He gives his back to her, stuffing things into his bag.

“Are you alright?”

“What?” she says.

He stops what he’s doing and turns to face her. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she snaps, angry that he had heard her. Angrier still, that she had allowed herself to appear so vulnerable. She doesn’t remember what she said in her sleep, what she might have given away.

He is studying her, his eyes wet and red-rimmed.

She purses her lips at him. “You didn’t sleep.”

Curiously, he shifts his gaze, seemingly embarrassed. He nods to himself and returns to packing.

“What was out there last night?”

For a long time, he doesn’t answer. He cinches up his bag and folds up his blanket before taking down her tent.

“Nothing,” he finally replies. “Just the wind.”

********

‘How did he die?’ Krycek had asked her once.

She was seething on the inside, and maybe he could tell. In the end she chose not to answer, and he hadn’t asked her anything about him since then.

Mulder died when the end came. He was just one of thousands obliterated in the first wave of attacks that sent everyone fleeing, though they could not escape. She was gone at the time, in the middle of nowhere, conducting an autopsy on a case she can barely even remember.

She traveled by car, then by foot, before joining a large group of people moving westward. Of course, it was no safer in the direction they were headed. There was simply nothing else to do but to keep going somewhere, anywhere but here.

A group of men came by one day. They were healthy and clean. People pawed at them, wanting to know where they were from and how they could get there. But there was something strange about these men and their vacant eyes, as if they saw nothing in the suffering of people around them. It seemed to her, at the the time, that they were looking for someone.

In the flock of people, they snatched only at the men before shoving them away. A few grew angry and the crowd became restless, wanting answers. A knife was pulled out before the gunshots began. There was screaming and flashes of blood as people fled in any direction they could. The men stood calmly, grasping their pistols, their eyes still searching for the one they had come for. It wasn’t long before they turned and left, disappearing like ghosts into the fields.

She remembers her heart pounding, her feet slipping as she ran into the streaming crowd, trying to find the injured. She was nearly trampled at one point, but someone pulled her up. They dragged her along the dirt, far away from everyone.

It was Krycek. He took her into the brush, and when she tried to fight him, he used his weight to crush her. His hand was over her mouth when he was telling her not to scream.

‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘They’ll kill you if they find you too.’

There was a noise and a flash. She closed her eyes, and Krycek shuddered on top of her.

When he finally groaned and rolled off, she understood what had happened. The field in front of her was littered with bodies, black and withered beyond recognition.

********

They stumble on a small camp sometime before noon.

She stays near the edge of the camp while Krycek is talking to others. They are mostly men, stony-faced, their eyes dark and suspicious. They treat Krycek gruffly, knocking into him and snickering at his missing arm. Krycek doesn’t react. Every once in awhile, he glances at her.

When he’s done, he joins her, his mouth drawn tight.

“Can’t stay here,” he mutters. “Let’s go.”

She can feel a dozen eyes on their backs as she and Krycek begin to leave. “Do you think they’ll follow us?”

“No.”

His answer doesn’t make her feel any better. She walks deliberately behind Krycek, not too fast and not too slow. If she doesn’t show any fear, perhaps those men might leave the both of them alone.

In front of her, Krycek reduces his pace, allowing her to catch up.

“Why are you stopping?”

“I’m not stopping,” he replies, taking slow steps alongside her.

She scowls, but he doesn’t seem to notice. All this time, she’s kept Krycek at a good distance in front of her so she could easily keep an eye on him. He used to tell her that it wasn’t safe, but she ignored him until he gave up.

“I don’t want you to fall too far behind,” he says. He looks at her before glancing over his shoulder, his eyes scanning the empty fields behind him.

He’s nervous, she thinks.

“Walk with me,” he says.

She sighs. “Fine.”

Hours go by, and eventually Krycek stops looking back. There is only the distant sound of crickets now, and the gentle noises of the tall grasses against their legs. It’s almost time to stop before it gets to be too dark.

“This is for you,” he says suddenly, squinting. There is a flash of metal when he opens his jacket, and then he is offering her a knife, the matte black handle pointed out for her to take.

“Where did you get this?” she demands.

“Traded for it.”

“Today? What did you trade?”

“Just take it.”

She accepts it from him and places it in the outer pocket of her bag. Warily, she eyes Krycek, but he only looks at her blankly.

“Let’s stop here,” is all he says.

They put up the tent and build a fire. Around the flames, she sits and watches Krycek as he takes out a knife and begins to shave. Gingerly, he angles the blade, taking delicate scrapes with the cutting edge flush against his cheek and jaw.

“That’s not your knife,” she points out.

“Not my old one.”

“Is that what you traded?”

He nods, examining the blade. “Got two for it. The old one was better.”

“Why?”

From his expression, she can see that he’s becoming irritated. “Why what?”

“You could have kept your knife.”

“Well,” he snaps, “you lost yours.”

She stares at him, the words sticking in her throat. She swallows. "How did you know that?” She knows how she must sound; no point in trying to hide the dread in her voice. Even in the flickering light, he must see her shivering in emergent panic.

Krycek stares at her for a long time. When he looks away, she can see his gaze sweeping his feet and his grip on the knife handle tighten. He makes one last motion over his jaw before wiping the blade on clean and sticking it into the ground.

“You’re afraid of me,” he finally says.

“Of course I am.”

He frowns at the knife in front of him. She can tell he wants to say something, but in the end, he stays quiet.

When the fire begins to die out, she retrieves her belongings and shuffles into the tent. She lays down and closes her eyes, the image of Krycek sitting on the ground, his shoulders slumped, flickering in her mind. It occurs to her, at the edges of sleep, that all along he had known, and all along he had done nothing to her.

She wonders to herself if she’s wrong. Maybe she is.

********

She thinks she knows how he lost his arm. He never really told her the whole story; she pieced it together from his splintered memories and the things he’d scream in his nightmares.

It happened in Russia, when he and Mulder went looking for the source of that rock. He said that they had held him down, and no matter how hard he’d fought, he couldn’t stop them. There was a knife, she remembers him saying, but then he stopped there and grew quiet. He told her more of the aftermath -- agony in a rural hospital, days of blackouts when they had to drug him and strap him down because it hurt so badly that he would continually trash his room.

He let her see it, once. It healed horribly. Raw nerve endings and muscle and bone under a thin layer of scar tissue and skin.

She asked him how he didn’t die. He said he had passed out.

‘Do you blame Mulder?’ she remembers asking.

He clenched his jaw and didn’t answer.

On cold nights, he would have nightmares. She knew that he was awake when she could hear him crying. In the beginning, she would lie in the tent, debating whether or not to come out. The first few times she did, he would hiss at her.

‘Go back to sleep,’ he would say.

One evening, it began to snow. Resigned, she offered to let him sleep in the tent along with her, but he refused.

‘Suit yourself,’ she said, but even then, she was worried for him.

His nightmares that night were predictably bad. He tried to stifle his crying, but she was already awake. The air was bitterly cold, and yet she came out, feeling around in the dark for him.

She found him sitting upright, his knees curled up against his chest. He was shaking.

‘Scully,’ he whispered.

She tried her best to quell her misgivings and led him to her tent. Inside, she put her arms around him. His skin was so cold. If he wasn’t crying and shivering, she would have guessed that he was dead.

He clung to her desperately with his one arm, his breaths shuddering against her.

‘Please,’ she heard him say. ‘Please, please.’

In the darkness he would not have seen her tears, but she swallowed them anyway.

********

Before week’s end, they find another camp. It’s a smaller settlement, perhaps more permanent than the one before. There are tents scattered on the trampled grasses and smoking fires burning on tiny mounds of sand.

“I’m going to look around,” Krycek says. He weaves his way through the sparse group of people, ignoring those who are gawking at the empty sleeve flapping at his side.

She doesn’t follow him. She prefers to stay at the edge of the camp, where she can be alone.

For a few minutes, she is. But from the corner of her eye, she can see three men approaching. They’re from the last camp, she realizes, the same ones who had pushed Krycek around. It becomes apparent to her then, that they recognize her, too.

“I know you,” one of them says. His cheeks are red from the wind, and he’s grinning at her.

She doesn’t return his smile.

“I don’t think so,” she says, walking away.

“I changed my mind,” he continues behind her. “I want my stuff back.”

She ignores him, her stomach in knots.

“Where’s your friend?” another one says.

She keeps walking, and people are staring at them now. It’s only when she hears a grunt and a thud that she finally turns around.

Krycek is on top of the red-faced man, his knees pinning down the man’s shoulders. The man writhes on the ground as he tries to get to his feet, but Krycek is faster. He lands blow after blow on the man’s head and face, not even stopping when there is nothing left but a clot of dark red flesh and a few flashes of white teeth and bone. The faceless man stops writhing, and his breathing is garbled.

A crowd has gathered to watch, and the two other men merely stand and stare. She’s the only one to pull Krycek away, and when he turns to her with that look in his eyes, she can feel her insides turn cold.

Krycek pushes her from him and gets up, his chest heaving. He spits on the ground.

When he begins to walk away, she struggles to keep pace. The crowd behind them is silent; no one dares to go after them. Soon, the camp disappears somewhere in the flattened landscape. The smoke from their fires is all that lingers in the air.

She knows the man will die. Perhaps Krycek had used the opportunity to intimidate the others, but even then she fears retaliation. Word of them might spread among other camps, and it makes their isolation that much worse.

She would tell Krycek of her outrage, but she can barely keep up.

The sun begins to set. He drops his things suddenly and starts a fire without saying a word.

“Krycek,” she says.

He doesn’t look at her. He sets himself down, grimacing.

“Krycek--”

“What?” he snarls. His lip is curled back, his eyes hard like flint.

She looks at him for a long time, crosses her arms and sighs.

No use in fighting with him about what had happened. She understands now where his fury had come from. She saw it in his eyes once before, back in April when Krycek yanked the young man off of her strangled him to death.

She settles down beside him. No food tonight. Her empty stomach tightens inside of her, and she doesn’t remember now what she wanted to say.

Instead, she manages to convince Krycek to untuck his hand from his chest. She cleans the open wounds on his knuckles and wraps his mangled hand in an old t-shirt of hers. Softly, she warns him of infection, but Krycek says nothing.

She sets up the tent and returns to sit next to him. They let the fire flicker away, and the air turns cold.

“Come inside tonight,” she says.

For a while she waits, but he doesn’t change his mind. She leaves him outside and lays down in the tent.

There is a knot in her stomach again, an ache in her chest. She wonders to herself how he sleeps outside in all that cold and in all his misery.

********

“How did you know?” she remembers asking him. It was only a couple of days after he caught her, when all those people had burned up in the field.

“I’ve seen those men before.”

“They were looking for you.”

He nodded.

“Why?”

From across the campfire, he smiled a little. “Go to sleep, Scully.”

“Tell me,” she hissed. She worked her wrists against the knots. He had tied her hands behind her back because she kept trying to run away. He’d promised to let her go when they were far enough. Whatever that meant.

He didn’t answer her. Instead, he turned his back to her and slept.

For days, it was like this, and she began to grow weaker. She couldn’t sleep. There wasn’t much food to begin with, and between the two of them, there was even less to go around. When the weather turned wet, the ropes began to cut into her wrists. She didn’t care enough to tell him.

He got angry when he saw it, but he didn’t say anything. He cut her loose and carried her to the nearest shelter that he could find. She slept for too many days, but from what she could remember, he kept to himself.

She was curled up one evening on the floor of an old house on the only dry spot that she could find. The rain was coming in from the broken window, soaking into the carpet. Without thinking, she reached out and felt the dampness until her fingers settled on the hard edges of a large shard of glass. In the dark, she waited for him with her weapon against her chest.

When he did come in, she was half-asleep. She kept her eyes shut until he came nearer, and when she could feel the heat of his breath, she brandished the glass, its pointed end aimed at his throat. If she had driven it in, she would have sliced through his artery. He’d die quickly, bleeding out in front of her.

She didn’t do it. In that moment, her mind was empty, and her hand around the glass felt unusually warm. There was a tightness in her chest that made her want to vomit.

He backed away and stared at her blankly. It seemed like he wasn’t afraid.

“Scully,” he said, but she didn’t respond.

“Scully, drop it.”

She shook her head.

“Come on,” he said, stepping closer. “Give it to me.”

He was stronger than her, and she was still very weak. If he came at her, there was no question that she’d lose. As he edged closer, she gripped the glass tightly, paralyzed.

When he got down on the ground next to her, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It didn’t matter anymore; she was going to die like those people anyway. Burned up in a field like so many others. She had escaped a similar fate before, but there was nothing to be done now. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

She dropped the glass in front of him. It landed softly on the carpet, hardly making a noise.

The only thing she could do was cry when he took her hand to try and stop the bleeding.

********

His injuries are slow to heal. She tried her best to keep the wounds clean, but he could barely do anything but walk. She made the fires and he watched. Sometimes she had to feed him. If he was concerned, he didn’t show it.

Three days ago, it began to rain. The fields turned to mush; the mud slowed them down. They had waited nearly all day at the edge of a forest to keep dry.

“We need shelter,” she says.

He looks at her.

“The tent won’t be enough,” she presses.

He wipes the rainwater from his face with his forearm. “Yeah.”

They set out together before the sun sets; the rain is still pouring.

Darkness creeps along steadily as the raindrops fade into a cold fog. Ahead there are thin, black trees, their bare branches grasping at the shifting shadows in the sky.

“Scully.”

“Do you see anything?”

“No,” he sighs.

Finally, they reach the trees. There isn't a single dry spot where they can settle down. With the chilly blanket of fog, she isn't sure she can even sleep tonight.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“For what?”

“We could have stayed at the camp.”

He is standing very close to her, his features obscured.

“They could be dead, Krycek. Like the others. It’s better if we hadn't.”

He says nothing. She can hear him shuffling around, struggling for something in his bag.

“Here,” he says. She helps him take out the blanket, and they sit together at the base of a tree. With his good arm, he guides her in and pulls her closer.

“Why are they looking for you?” she murmurs. He had never told her before. Every time she asked, he would brush her off or ignore her.

Of course, he is quiet again. She is halfway asleep against his shoulder when he shivers.

“I’m not going to make it,” he says between his teeth.

“Try to sleep.”

“I’ll only get worse. They’ll find me, and they’ll kill you, too.”

She sighs. “We need shelter, and you need to rest.”

“When we get to the next camp, you stay with them.”

The idea almost makes her laugh. “And get burned up like all the others?”

“You’ll be okay. I won’t make contact with anyone there. You go in alone. Just you.”

“Whatever,” she mumbles. He isn’t making any sense. Besides, she’s too tired to argue, and he must be delirious in his condition.

He coughs harshly. Against his shoulder, she drifts in and out, exhaustion and discomfort battling for her attention.

His shivering begins to worsen until she realizes that he’s weeping.

********

It did happen the way he said it would. Two weeks ago she had joined this camp, and they welcomed her readily when they learned she had been a doctor. They had some extra food, adequate supplies. They said that they were headed to California.

The day that she left him, he was struggling to stand upright. They traveled so slowly, in such small increments, that by midday she could look behind them and still see the patch of trees where they had sought shelter for the night.

He had practically pleaded for her to leave him, but she urged him on until he grew tired of arguing with her.

By the afternoon, they could smell the campfire smoke. Sulfurous and unhealthy. The camp was too far away for her to evaluate. Who knew what kind of people were down there.

She remembers looking to Krycek and seeing something change in his flat expression. He glanced at her from where he sat, the crease between his eyebrows deepening. His mouth opened and closed.

She sat down beside him, unsure of what to do or say.

“Scully,” he wheezed. He’d been having a difficult time breathing. “You should go now.”

“Krycek--

“You’re out of options.”

Of course, he was right. His body was deteriorating. Or whatever was left of it. He wouldn't be able to live much longer. She had mourned Mulder, between her pangs of hunger and the cold and the heat and the constant battle to stay alive. Each day, she still mourned him. It was then that she knew that she would mourn Krycek, too. There was likely no one else in the world who would.

“Take it,” he whispered. He nodded towards the bag that she’d been carrying for him.

“Why,” she had asked. It was something she never understood. She wanted to know why they found themselves together, why he didn't just kill her or let her go and why she chose to stay. She didn't want his things.

“Just go, Scully,” he had said quietly, after a long time. “I’d do the same thing if our positions were switched.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

He laughed and coughed hard. “You don’t know me very well,” he wheezed, and coughed some more. When he caught his breath, he looked down into his lap.

“But I am glad it’s you and not me,” he said.

She took his offerings. He turned away from her, shivering, but she couldn’t leave him like this. It was a painful thought, for him to die alone.

She felt the back of his neck and then his cheek. His skin felt rough and feverish. He hadn’t been able to shave for too long.

It had started to rain at some point. She put up the tent and half-dragged him into it. They slept in the decaying darkness of the late afternoon, heavy raindrops pelting the fabric overhead.

He died sometime during the night, clutching at her.

 

*********

*********

 

“Hey, Scully.”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d you get that tattoo?”

She snorted at me as she pulled down her shirt.

“Never thought you were the type.”

“Mind your own business, Krycek.”

I laughed. “I never got one. Against policy. Besides, it’s a little self-indulgent, don’t you think?”

She didn’t answer me. I could see her looking off in the distance, her lips in a tight little line. She blinked into the wind and sighed.

“Scully,” I said. I pulled her into my jacket, and we walked together. The wind must’ve been killing her.

“I got my own little mark, I guess. Not as nice looking as yours.”

“Don’t say that, Krycek,” she scolded, but she held onto me just a bit tighter. A long time passed. “I got it in Philadelphia,” she said.

I almost tripped. “What is it exactly?”

“It’s an ouroboros. A snake eating its own tail. I’m not going to show it to you.”

“Fair enough,” I said, and somehow it felt like one of life’s great disappointments. “Sounds like it would suit me more than you.”

“Mm,” she murmured. “Maybe.”

We set up the tent, made a fire. It was unusually dark. I could barely see her. The fire was warm but the glow was gone, fading.

“Scully?” I said.

“I’m not going to show it to you,” she answered.

Fair enough.

I moved towards her presence in the darkness, felt her arms around me. This isn’t how I remembered it.

Scully?

“Don’t say that, Krycek.”

I hugged her. I wanted to know that she’s still here.

“Of course I am,” she said, harshly. Like I didn’t know. “Of course I am.”

Okay.

She was sleeping in the tent. I heard her cry. She was saying his name, but he’s not here. It’s only me. I didn’t know how to make it up to her.

“You’re not going to sleep?” she said.

It’s okay. I’ll keep watch.

“For what?”

Don’t worry, I said. Don’t worry.

You don’t know me very well.

I don’t want to leave you all alone.

Don’t worry.

 

\---------


End file.
